a closing day tribute to Hidden In Plain View showing at Studios of Key West, and more from the Sarasota homeless front

Today, Hidden In Plain View will be taken down at Studios of Key West. Yesterday, I replied to an email from a regular Key West reader of my ravings, and copied the reply to the Sarasota journalist who wrote what the reader sent to me.

Mr Sloan:

What say you?

SINCE YOU ASKED, GLENN, MY THOUGHTS IN BOLD ITALICS … AM HAVING INTERMITTENT TROUBLE WITH THIS NEW LAPTOP, SPELLCHECKER SEEMS AS ON AS OFF, SO PLEASE EXCUSE ANY TYPING FLUBS …

[what Glenn sent was all in BOLD CAPS, as were my REPLIES, but the BOLD was lost and the case did not hold well in my replies, when I pasted all of it to this website]

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Tryon: Change response to homeless

Thomas Tryon

Published: Sunday, December 9, 2012 at 1:00 a.m.

What if:

•The American Civil Liberties Union quit defending the “right” of homeless people to hang out all day in Sarasota’s parks and sidewalks.

What about repealing the equal protection clause of the 14th amendendment?

• The city Police Department stopped, forever, arresting homeless people for hanging out or sleeping in those places?

then, there would be no need for the aclu to defend the “right” of homelESS people to hang out all day or sleep in those places.

• The city turned off electrical outlets, bathrooms and water hoses in public venues — if those amenities and necessities were attracting homeless people, encouraging loitering and, possibly, enabling misbehavior?

This move also will discourage all other people from using the same public venues, AS CLEARWATER, wSN’T IT?, LEARNED AT A PUBLIC PARK WHERE THE BATHROOMS WERE WELDED SHUT AT rOBERT mARBUT’S suggestion, WASN’T IT?, ACCORDING TO AN ARTICLE i READ A WHILE BACK AND PUBLISHED. wASn’t IT sarasota WHERE A CITY COP JAILED A HOMELESS MAN FOR CHARGING HIS CELL PHONE AT A PUBLIC PARK AND GOT THE CITY GREAT NATIONAL PUBLICITY. quite an article in this link:

• The city, its police and private-sector social service agencies worked deliberately to increase access to electricity, bathrooms and water — in locations that provide shelter, substance-abuse treatment and job training in a secure environment, 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

what will a facility like this cost the city of Sarasota to build? To operate a month? Where are the homeless addicts going to hang out? In the same holding pen as the homeless people who are not addicts?

• The city commissioners, and the residents who complain about vagrants, agreed on policies and practices that do not criminalize homelessness but, instead, focus on implementing cost-effective strategies to get at least 80 percent of homeless people off the streets and into various forms of safe shelter?

I imagine about 90 percent, or more, of street people are addicts. Doesn’t matter where they are put, if they are still using, there is no chance of them changing.

• The new police chief, who arrives next month, created a new mind-set in the department, changing everything from the language used by officers — stop calling homeless people and vagrants “bums,” even in jest, for example — to training and staffing?

I tried to get kw west city officials and county commissioner heather carruthers and her friends of higgs beach committeE to stop calling homeless people vagrants and bums, and i got nowhere. So I started calling the name-callers nazis.

• The officers on the street were trained to recognize, and deal with, the social problems facing homeless people and vagrants?

the social problems are in plain view, nothing to recognize, but dealing with the problems beyond symptomatic intervention is another matter altogether, especially if “homeless and vagrants” are addicts and are using their drug of choice. I see this journalist went back to using the term “vagrants”.

• The Police Department assigned, in exchange, a social worker to help the teams of officers most likely to encounter homeless people?

Teams of officers? They need teams of officers to encounter homeless people? They really think a social worker can help police encounter and deal with homeless people who are using drugs? Has this journalist had any significant direct dealing with street people and other kinds of homeless people?

• The agencies that provide shelter agreed to objectively assess whether they are efficiently utilizing their inventory of temporary and transitional housing?

transitional to where, some other form of subsidized housing? the most efficient use of such housing is for homeless people who are not using and truly want to get back on their feet.

• The city, county government, service agencies and philanthropic foundations agreed to fund the hiring of a director of homeless services, whose working hours would be dedicated solely to getting individuals and families into housing and assistance programs?

what is this director going to cost the city of sarasota? what will be the cost of these housing and assistance programs? Who will pay for it? for how long? how long do the programs run? what happens to “clients” who do not pass muster and/or will not stop using their drug of choice? How big is Sarasata’s jail? is that where the drop-outs will be sent?

• The director had the staff support of a well-qualified financial-development director whose focus would be to apply for grants and tax credits, as well as seek private-sector funding?

what will the well-qualified financial-devleopment director cost the city of sarasota? How much money is sarasota willing to throw at homelessness before the city gets a handle on whether it’s working and is what is working worth the cost?

• The social service agencies doubled down in their efforts to coordinate and cooperate and, in particular, co-locate facilities and services — for the sake of effectiveness and convenience, and to prevent transients downtown and in neighborhoods?

why not just arm sarasota police with tasers and use them like cattle prods to heard (should be herd] homeless people into and keep them in the city’s homeless holding pens?

the condition is what it is, it enables itself, and it penalizes its host. Making homeless people criminals for being homeless penalizes them further. Homelessness occurs regardless of what government, private sector and individuals do, or don’t do. chronicly homeless people, also known as street people, are an entirely different culture from new homeless people. Lumping both cultures into one category needs to stop. The two cultures need to be seen and dealt with differently.

What if those things occurred?

My guess is Sarasota would end its polarized standoff.

My hope is that those steps, taken together, would help the city and greater community reduce the number of homeless people — whether they congregate downtown, migrate to the suburbs or hide in the woods — by helping them help themselves.

How many times have I heard this line? i suppose if it is said often enough, it will become a sort of Nicean creed, but it will not change street people. only god can change street people and/or addicts. all the rest is treating symptoms.

Making these moves would also endear Sarasota to Robert Marbut, a recognized expert in working with communities to reduce homelessness and its wide-ranging impacts.

now we get to where this came from, is headed.

In February, Marbut addressed a day-long seminar conducted by the Community Coalition on Homelessness, based in Manatee County. I was impressed by his intellect — he earned master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Texas — and political savvy (he served two terms on the San Antonio City Council and was an aide to Henry Cisneros, a former mayor of the city). He also has a business sense; he founded San Antonio’s sports foundation.

Marbut is best known nationally as the founding president and chief executive of the Haven for Hope Campus in San Antonio — billed as the largest and most comprehensive “transformative” campus in the United States.

Closer to our region, he has consulted with St. Petersburg and Clearwater on their efforts to prevent vagrancy and reduce the number of homeless people in their communities by 80 percent.

The implementation of Marbut’s strategies in Pinellas County hasn’t been flawless, and well-meaning homeless advocates disagree with some of his views.

But those cities have moved forward and made progress — unlike Sarasota, which is stuck in a stalemate, an unacceptable status quo.

What I like about Marbut’s approach is its balance and potential to get Sarasota out of the either-or approach.

He believes, for example, that allowing panhandling and open-air feeding programs enables homelessness; in contrast, he espouses compassionate treatment of homeless people as human beings and advocates comprehensive, holistic strategies aimed at providing different levels of shelter, treatment and training.

The new city manager, Thomas Barwin, recently announced the creation of a 90-day task force on homelessness, with a focus on root causes. There’s a fear in the community that the discussions will be about the same-old, same-old responses. That fear could be assuaged by having a conversation with Robert Marbut.

let Robert Marbut COME back to Key west on his dime. Let Father steven braddock, ceo of florida keys outreach coalition, a veteran of offering shelter and rehabilitation to the down and out, be they recovering addicts, street people, or both, and I, who lived on and off the street in Key West and elsewhere, grill marbut for a couple of hours in an advertised town hall meeting in old city hall, open to the public, attended by the mayor, city commissioners, city manager and city attorney, and by Tom Tryon and thomas barwin. let’s see how marbut holds up under examination by two people who actually know something about street people and new homeless people. Maybe Marbut will show better than he did the brief time I spoke with him when he was in Key west.

The angels who ride herd on me, lots of people say I invented the angels, got onto me in dreams before this ungodly hour about me letting my reply last night go before it was ready to be let go. I should have included a link to the youtube documentary video of the Hidden In Plain View homeless art, poetry and music exhibition opening at Studios of Key West, for Tom and perhaps others in the Sarasota area to watch. The exhibition opened November 15 and was a smash. About a week ago, one of the curators told me they’d never had anywhere close to that kind of public traffic following an opening. Yet, neither the daily nor the bi-weekly newspaper reviewed the opening, nor the exhibition. Pretty odd, given Key West’s official creed, adopted by its City Commission years ago, is ONE HUMAN FAMILY. Unless, we happen to be homeless.

The exhibition, which is being taken down today, beautifully and graphically demonstrates that homeless people are human beings, too. The youtube video gives a taste of the exhibition, but hardly replaces actually spending time viewing and absorbing it. The exhibition was not about fixing or herding homeless people off the streets and out of the parks into a hidden place. The exhibition was about seeing and hearing homeless people and mainstream adults and children’s impressions of homeless people, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. It was, in my view, easily the most important and deepest and beautiful art exhibition in Key West’s history. Per capita, Key West probably has more galleries than any city in America, perhaps in the world. Per capital [should be per capita, but perhaps both apply], Key West also probably has more bars and churches than any city in America, perhaps in the world.

Sloan Bashinsky Thanks, Vicki. Erika did a terrific job, Sheelman’s photos are riveting. A labor of love. They gave of themsleves, asked for nothing in retrun.

As you know from reading my posts, Glenn, I often have written, in God’s eyes, we all are homeless. And recently, an old friend who came through the Keys with her husband, after taking in Hidden In Plain View with me, wrote that she’d had a vision that I should write a book about homelessness. We batted that around some, and I wrote about the batting around in a few posts, until I pretty much concluded that I had started writing the book when I wrote the first post about Hidden In Plain View. A book about homelessness in the conventional sense, and in the God sense.

The book was already on my websites, in LIFO order. Last in, first out. The book can be found by entering “Hidden In Plain View” in the “search” blank in the right-hand menu of the home page of www.goodmorningfloridakeys.com. The most recent post to date will include this email exchange. There are quite a few posts/chapters, which can be read from the top down, backwards, [or] from the bottom up, forward. It’s a lot to read, and a lot of it is about the exhibition, a lot of it is about conventional homelessness, and a lot of it is about homelessness in the separation from God sense.

My friend who had the vision about my writing a book suggested I write a primer on homelessness, for beginners, and then I write a second book on homelessness, in the fuller sense. However, that is not how I write. As you know, Glenn, I write from the deep well of my experience, as directed by the angels who run me. I say from time to time in posts, I know the angels as Jesus, Michael and Melchizedek, and sometimes they let others in their confederacy have at me. I candidly admit in some of my posts that I know most people don’t believe what I write about angels, and that I can prove none of it, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Maybe this is enough for now. Maybe the angels will let me go back to sleep for a little while, before I get this all together to publish it. Maybe they will get on me some more in new dreams. I never know what they are going to do or say to me. They usually don’t think like me, or like humans.

Sloan

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So, I took my nap, and my dreams left me feeling the angels liked what I added to send to Glenn Eyw and Tom Tryon, and what I wrote yesterday about both the exhibition and No Name Key, and that sustantially increasing vocational education training in Keys high schools, and, I suppose in high schools across America, would head off a lot of homelessness. My dreams also left me feeling more might be coming in all three arenas.